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It turns out that most of the claims Kerry was reiterating had come from men who never actually fought in Vietnam. In fact, most of them had never even been in the military. Still, that didn't stop him from trying to convince Congress, as well as everyone in America, that our troops serving in Vietnam were generally rapists, torturers, and psychotic murderers.

That's not quite accurate. Most (though not all) of the "Winter Soldiers" Kerry cited were in the military, and most had been in Vietnam, but relatively few were in combat, and therefore few were in a position to see the atrocities they claimed were rampant. The trick they used was to recount horrible "war crimes" in gruesome detail, while remaining vague about who, what, where and when, thereby making it difficult for investigators to verify or disprove their accounts.